Random comments on interesting posts within the agile software development community...

Monday, August 24, 2009

Quote Series Part 4 - Metrics & Managers

This is part four of the series, to see what this series is about, click here.

Quotes on "Metrics"

Another purpose of measuring capacity is to improve throughput. If you plan for less than your capacity, you get less done than you could have. If you plan for more than your capacity, you get less done than you could have.

Having a plan with "enough" work in it less some slack to improve the probability of meeting commitments increases the amount of work that gets done compared to planning for too much or too little. - Kent Beck

Once you start measuring something, you can easily end up in a situation where the measurement itself starts influencing the things you want to measure. - unknown

Quotes on "Managers"

Management owns the 4 T's (time, talent , treasury, target )... everything else is up to the team. If you have a issue that affects one of the T's, then ask management for input. - Tim Ottinger

Message to Management - eventually, you can push too much change at once.... back off and let the team normalize. - JB Rainsberger

In my experience, it is the leader’s (manager’s) job to intervene in the case of inappropriate behavior, and when he or she does, the rest of the team will be grateful for the intervention. It is being a “servant” to the whole team by suppressing the individual behavior that will keep the team from being successful.

It’s not about telling people what they are doing wrong. It’s about constantly steering everyone on the team in the direction of success, and never letting any individual compromise the progress of the team toward success. - Mary Poppendieck

Note: where I can, I've credited or linked the source of the quote. Finding the source of a quote is like chasing a ghost. When a mentor says something witty, you might not know they are quoting someone else. If you are aware of a more appropriate source for any quote, PLEASE put a comment on the post and I'll do what I can to validate this. I mean no disrespect to anyone. I believe the risk of incorrect citings is outweighed by the value of sharing these wonderful nuggets.